Kerry Echoes Liberals' Disdain for Military

Sen. John Kerry's mangled anti-Bush joke
has metastasized into a week of negative news for liberals hoping
to regain control of the Congress. Even his reluctant apology has
done little to quash the fires he lit. Significantly, these fires
rage because liberals have yet to expunge the scarlet "D" that has
adorned them since the Vietnam War -- "D" for disdain of our
military.

Let's review the tape. Kerry advised students at a campaign rally
in California that they would "do well" if they studied hard and
made "an effort to be smart." If not: "You get stuck in
Iraq."

Kerry's inference, of course, was that military recruits are
motivated not by patriotism and a willingness to defend our
liberties by placing themselves in harm's way, but by economic
desperation and a lack of opportunity. Thus, a disproportionately
minority cadre of young men and women from our poorest communities
enlist reluctantly and must fight President Bush's "illegal" war in
Iraq. As Rep. John Dingell (D.-Mich.) put it: "This is a rich man's
war and it is a poor man's fight."

Indeed, in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, liberals
insisted that the burden of military service was being borne, in
Rep. John Murtha's (D.-Pa.) words, by "people who are volunteering
because they could not find a job." Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.)
and 14 of his liberal House colleagues sponsored legislation to
reinstitute the draft. "It is plain fact," argued Rep. John
Conyers, the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, "that the
military [sic] does not come from the higher socio-economic status
[sic] of society." Rep. Pete Stark (D.-Calif.) reasoned that a
draft "with no deferments and no exceptions" would be "both fair
and democratic" because "it will mean that Americans of every
background will serve our country, not just the poor and
disadvantaged as it is today."

This patronizing form of class-warfare is deeply rooted in the
liberal psyche. It's no surprise, moreover, that it seeped through,
accidentally or not, in Kerry's unfortunate statement. But the
liberal premise is utterly wrong.

A new study by my
colleague Tim Kane examines the characteristics of U.S. military
recruits since 1999 and finds "recruit quality is increasing as the
war in Iraq continues." His review of Pentagon enlistee data
uncovered a number of what liberals will regard as inconvenient
truths, including:

The poor are enlisting at demonstrably lower
rates since 9/11. Specifically, the percentage of recruits from the
poorest one-fifth of American neighborhoods declined from 18% in
1999 to 13.7% in 2005. The reverse is true for recruits from the
wealthiest one-fifth of neighborhoods. They are now
overrepresented, accounting for 22.8% of all recruits.

These recruits are more likely than other
Americans to have read and understood Kerry's statement. Why? Their
mean reading level in 2004 was a full grade higher than that of the
comparable youth population.

Not surprisingly, the percentage of
high-quality recruits -- defined as those who both score above the
50th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test and have a
high-school diploma -- jumped from 57% in 2001 to 64% four years
later.

Pentagon data also indicate that recruits
from the 100 zip codes with the highest concentrations of
African-Americans joined the military in proportion to their share
of the population. "This indicates," Kane concludes, "that these
areas are not being overtly targeted to enlist large numbers of
black recruits." Reinforcing Kane's point, recruitment data for
2005 indicates that only two recruits hailed from Rangel's Harlem
neighborhood in New York City.

We'll give the last word to a former
colleague, a Ph.D. economist who left his family earlier this year
to serve in Iraq:

A number of us here at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad take
great exception to [Kerry's] comments. There are many highly
successful people here who have left their "comfortable jobs" and
families back in the U.S. to be a part of something
important.

As for education, just in my office there are three Ph.D.s, a
Harvard MBA, and a junior staffer who will be heading to Harvard or
Stanford next year to start an MBA program … Down the hall
from me is a highly successful oil geologist (and former professor
of geology), an electricity economist, a former investment banker,
and a broad range of international economic, financial and
utilities consultants.

"We're all here," he emphasized, "to help rebuild Iraq, not take
cheap shots from those who just want to score political points a
week before the election."

Mike Franc, who
has held a number of positions on Capitol Hill, is vice president
of Government Relations at The Heritage Foundation.